Tag: fitness and health

For the first time in my life, I really know what it feels like, not to have any time and even when I do have time, there is always something that can and should be done.

It is not a bad place to be, as being busy… Keeps you busy and being in this situation has also forced me to revaluate what I spend my time on and also what my time is really worth.

The above actually has nothing to do with the infrequent blog updates. What has been a really tough mental barrier to break through has been the content of the blog and my subject matter.

How I feel about the content I write is also greatly influenced by whether I am inspired to write or not, and if I am not inspired, I feel that my writing has a very forced feel to it. I am not really comfortable to put out any content with which I am not entirely happy with.

I have also made peace with the fact that whilst traveling, the content came easy and I could write something everyday, as each day was filled with new adventures and exciting events which were in line with what my blog is about.

The subject matter, which I am referring to is my training and my travels. Currently my travels are non existent as I have been living in South Africa for the last couple of months and even though I have technically lived in four different towns since my arrival, I still do not consider this traveling and it would be a dreadful bore, typing out my daily routine of buying household cleaning products and hanging up laundry to dry.

Now as for the fitness, training and exercise part which in my opinion has always trumped the traveling, eating and adventure part. Although I have not been blogging about it does not mean it did not get a lot of attention.

Upon my return, my father said to me “The way you have been training is unsustainable, in a few weeks you will be unfit again.”, which naturally inspired me to train furiously with new inspiration.

Funnily enough, a sort of similar comment sparked the same reaction when I first left South Africa to travel abroad. A friend of mine said that I will not be able to train whilst traveling, too hell with that I decided.

This was before the idea of doing a Muay Thai camp even remotely crossed my mind. At that stage I did not even know that these existed. her comment also sparked a fever in me which drove me to seek out training places regardless of the 45 degree weather in Vietnam and the tropical rain falls in Cambodia, trained, I trained!

The above both led me to where I am right now as I am typing this and ironically I am now a lot fitter, stronger and leaner than I was while traveling, even though whilst traveling I did focus on exercise and diet, here at home I can be a lot more scientific and measure exactly what I put in my body and when.

I also have a routine, schedule and places to train. I think that this makes a massive difference as I have found that the most important aspect with exercise is definitely the consistency.

It is amazing that you do not realize any difference in your body until one day you just do. This does not happen overnight but rather over the course of several months or in my case, it took me well over a year to personally see any change although I knew that there was.

Today I feel like I can keep on writing and writing as I feel super inspired but I will have to cut it short as I have some work to do before going for running time trials in about an hour.

I have been running a lot lately. I actually have a goal to complete a 21km race with one and a half hours but this goal has changed to completing it in one hour and twenty minutes.

I will update with how it went and afterwards, I will be doing some calisthenics training.

I woke up feeling a whole lot better today, my energy levels were still not 100% but I was ready to train. The wind was so loud, it drowned out the roosters, that normally wake me up. I did not think that there will be beach conditioning due to the windy weather, but at 8:00 AM I got ready for it anyway.

Despite the windy weather, the group gathered and we made it down to the beach, where we had another intense session of sprints, jumps, crawls and push ups on the beach.

It was not the hardest session ever, we have had worst but I was thankful as I am still recovering from the flu.

After the morning session Tim and I went for fruit shakes, I had a banana, peanut and chocolate shake, no sugar. Melissa who runs the little shake and breakfast shop already knows the drill, no sugar and no milk, just the fruit, some cocoa powder and ice, simple but makes for a great shake.

We were planning on doing boxing training after our shakes but training had been cancelled, which again, I was thankful for and took the time to rest before going out a few hours later for lunch.

Lunch was at our old time favourite Na-Meet, we had the usual of rice with a couple of side dishes, delicious home cooked food.

This afternoon I had an interesting training session. We did our warm ups and was immediately told to wrap our hands and put on our gloves. We were paired up with a partner and did two rounds with that partner before moving on to a new partner.

My first partner was great, he is very fit Filipino boxer, who clearly has some great experience, he gave me a real run for my money with his ducks, dodges and side steps, very good session.

After two rounds I moved on to Christiaan, with whom I did spar with before but very lightly. Today it seemed that he had some kind of score to settle up as he threw punches hard enough to take my head right off. Keep in mind, the sparring sessions are supposed to be without real power, therefore I don’t even wear a mouth guard.

So after repeatedly asking Christian to take it easy, the coaches also told him to control his punches from the side, I realised that I have to fight back. One of his weaknesses is his fitness, I definitely have the upper hand when it comes to raw fitness.

So I started dancing around him, staying out of range of his punches and just coming in close when I wanted to attack. I could immediately tell he was frustrated with my tactics as he was hell bent on hitting me even harder.

After dancing around him a couple of times and also hitting back with all the power I had, he stopped me and said, “You are hitting hard.”, I said “Yes off course!” and showed him my bleeding lip where just moments before he threw a straight punch which I could not block and the inside of my lip exploded.

The last few seconds we went very hard, it was more than just sparring, it was a personal little battle but it was still good fun. In the end we bumped gloves and moved on but I am sure that I could take him if we were to have a proper one on one boxing fight.

My third partner was Leah, yes a girl who packs a mighty punch and also knows some pretty wild combos. By the time I sparred with her, I was exhausted and barely finished the two rounds.

It was great. I think to really compete I need to take a private lesson or two which I might do tomorrow or Thursday. That is it for today, here are some more Boracay shots.

About

My name is Siegfried Grimbeek, I am web developer who is currently in Cape Town, I am moving to Hong Kong pretty soon. This blog details my fitness and spiritual journey as I learn more about myself. Read More